SOURCE: A review of The Whirlpool, in Quill and Quire, Vol. 52, No. 11, November, 1986, p. 25.

In the following review, Ledger offers a highly negative assessment of The Whirlpool.

[The Whirlpool] is a dissertation masquerading as a novel and as deceptions go, it's not terribly successful. Pity the poor reader who, lured by the Signature Series' romance-style covers, opens the book and looks for a story. 'Twould be in vain: there's no plot, little characterization, next to no dialogue, and certainly no drama.

Urquhart is after a berth in the CanLit pantheon. The three major characters in her novel live beside the whirlpool in 19th-century Niagara Falls. They live in separate solipsistic bubbles, seldom talking, almost never touching. In each case, the character's major relationship is with nature. It's that golden oldie, that cherished Canuck chestnut: man against nature or, will we survive with our garrison mentality intact? Maude the...